The cover you put up is much more of a hook than the final design used for the paperback. That's the thing with Avatar - for some reason their paperbacks rarely have that hook factor that just draws you in.

Also, why do they feel the need to label the book "trade paperback" on the front? Just one more thing to clutter up the cover.

Picked it up though, and am looking forward to reading it this weekend.

Also, why do they feel the need to label the book "trade paperback" on the front?

We got into the habit of marking everything clearly (but relatively unobtrusively, I think) so it's obvious what a given item is when it's being handled through the distro & retail pipeline. Perhaps not always necessary in the case of trades, but that's part of where it comes from. Also, barcodes on everything coming soon, on comics too (on the back cover!), so as the industry adjusts to that perhaps that changes habits too (or perhaps not).

I really like Jacen's work on trade covers, as I think he does a great job capturing elements from the series on the cover. And of course, he's a great artist.

You should post some examples of book covers you like in this thread. I'd like to see examples of what's caught your eye recently.

Boom's recent Talent paperback looks great. I guess I prefer the more movie-poster looking cover. The cover in the first post just reaches out and grabs you. The printed cover is drawn well enough, but just feels kind of non-descript and doesn't really stand out in a crowd. If I weren't predisposed to buying the book, I probably wouldn't give the paperback a second look, but that cover in the first post, most definitely. But maybe it's just me.

One other small thing that maybe only I noticed but, besides telling us that it's a paperback, I noticed that you included the price on the front cover too. For some reason that stood out as odd. I don't know of any other publishers that regularly do this with their paperbacks. DC doesn't, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, AiT, Boom, Fantagraphics, Oni, Viper, First Second, Graphitti. I don't mean to rake you over the coals here, but I'm genuinely curious, was there a retailer demand to see the cover price on the front covers of paperbacks?

Again, it's just a matter of being in the habit of being clear and obvious, as we do a lot of things that have different covers and different price points on some covers (although obviously, there's not much of that going on with trades specifically).

Heh, it's times like this I'm glad my housemate also buys comics. He picked this up on the same day I got my copy of The Black Dossier, so I got to read both in the same weekend. Both excellent, although it was only Blackgas that made me do a double take upon reaching a certain page. Trust me, you'll know which page I'm referring to when you get there. Yeah, that page. Ewwwww ....

I picked that one up as soon as it arrived at my shop. I didn't get to read it issue by issue but I sat down and read the trade straight through. I'm a fan of zombie books, and that was a really good zombie book. :)

I picked this one up when it came out in the single issues. I made sure to get the Gore covers, because nothing says loving like raw flesh dripping from the mouths of zombies while they punch through your intestines to grab a second helping.

The new COVER to CRECY that came out today is great, a lot of guys were grabbing it thinking its a sequel and not a reprinting. Only problem with VARIANTS and Alternate covers, sometimes people re-buy the same book by mistake.

But i did sell a good amount of the new CRECY reprint to soem new folks, even though ive had a good 8-10 CRECYS racked with the GNS in our AVATAR section on the shelves.